Vilnius Audio Tours

Vilnius was founded, according to legend, when Grand Duke Gediminas dreamed of an iron wolf howling from a hill and a priest told him it meant he should build a fortress and city there. That was around 1323, and the city that resulted has been through more than most European capitals care to remember: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tsarist Russia, German occupation, Soviet incorporation, and finally independence on March 11, 1990, when Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare it. Fourteen civilians died at the TV Tower on January 13, 1991 when Soviet troops attacked, and their names are inscribed on the concrete that still shows bullet holes.

The Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994, is the largest Baroque district north of the Alps and the easternmost significant Baroque city in Europe, a style its architects developed into something distinctively local called Vilnian Baroque.

The most famous church in the city, St Anne's, is a late Gothic masterpiece from the 16th century that Napoleon reportedly said he wanted to carry back to Paris on the palm of his hand. The bohemian district of Uzupis, across the Vilnele River from the Old Town, declared itself an independent republic in 1997 with its own constitution, currency, and president, and the angel statue on its main street blowing a trumpet has become the most photographed object in Vilnius.